Troy

Man, why is everything so Black and white with you all. Why does everything have to be all of nothing. I'm certain I use Google's suite of services more than anyone here. That coupled with my WWW expertise allows me to better understand them than you all. Google has paid AALBC more than any other entity BAR NONE. AALBC has both helped and hurt by Google. The WWW at large has been both helped and hurt by Google. I believe Google monopoly in search is doing more harm than good. To say my expertise is drowned out by my "hatred" of Google is ridiculous. I appreciate my unique perspective allows me to see thing you simply can't, but because you cant see it does not make it untrue or the result of hatred. Now Facebook, in my opinion has been FAR more destructive, all things considered, than Google. We can share memes without having our data collected and used to manipulate us, our state of mind, elections, etc, the way Facebook does. Facebook, in my opinion, is as bad a big tobacco, I may hate Facebook, but that came after years of use, observation, and yes... dare I say it... books. @Delano, your joke may have been funny I just did not get it 🙂

@Delano ?

They are really quite tasty!

I guess there it is in a nut shell. I'm sure your pension is secure as long as you need it. Someone has to carry all the junk mail we get 🙂 @Mel Hopkins please don't encourage @Pioneer1 LOL!

He has saved many people.

@Mel Hopkins if that is the story about the white American missionary who went in to convert those people (we dont know what they xall themselves) imagine if Africans reacted that way to the Europeans who 1st stepped onto the African shores... @Cynique, based ipon your ardent defense of the platform and your jumping down my throat everytime i say anything negative about the site. Have you ever said anthing about the site causing harm? If so show me 'cause i obviously missed that. My last post answered all your questions. I dont begrude any individual for doing what makes them happy. My gripe is with Facebook, cigarette makers, etc. I don't blame victims. @Delano ? @Mel Hopkins if that is the story about the white American missionary who went in to convert those people (we dont know what they call themselves) imagine if Africans reacted that way to the Europeans who 1st stepped onto the African shores... @Cynique, based ipon your ardent defense of the platform and your jumping down my throat everytime i say anything negative about the site. Have you ever said anthing about Facebook being harmful? If so, show me 'cause i obviously missed that. My last post answered all your questions. I dont begrude any individual for doing what makes them happy. My gripe is with Facebook, cigarette makers, etc. I don't blame victims. @Delano ?

What is this word? I can't figure out what you are trying to say in the sentence it is used. I know what you were trying to spell here. The missing punctuation and incomplete sentences do not really pose a problem for me either. I'm not sure why you have decided to become the chief of the grammar police recently.

Sheesh Cynique, I will relate anecdotes. There is nothing wrong with this, but stop making believe that this is the only evidence I'm provided. There are great volumes of data that speak to the changing demographics of Facebook that I've previous shared and that you can easily look up if you wanted. @Cynique stop making my justified critique of Facebook all about YOU and please spare me the explanation of why people use Facebook. Remember I'm the inhouse WWW expert😛 Please, use Facebook, smoke cigarettes, get drunk, eat pork, go to church, don't read books, have unprotected sex with strangers, do whatever makes you happy in this life, but stop making believe that Facebook is not having adverse impact on our culture. Just because YOU did not die from smoking cigarettes does not mean it is not a scourge killing over 1,000 people a day in the United States alone. If you ran around here playing down the ill effects of cigarette smoking, I'd challenge you every day of the week. The same goes for Facebook.

On the other hand they are also, motivating, inspiring, and powerful speakers, who help a great many people get through life with much greater ease. This reminds me of an earlier conversation.

LOL! Man that is the only thing you've said that made sense in the last two months! 😂 While it does imply some restrictions I'm not saying it is "better." I just find in the south women, in general, have no problem adhering to the more traditional gender roles. This is good for some people and not for others. I'm not making any value judgements. I'm just saying what it is. It is not a "claim." I objectively know more about the www than anyone else here -- full stop, end of story. Just accept it man. @Delano, I'm not sure why you are going back to the 80's the net was not publically available back then. But I was actually a user of the internet I have had an email address since 1980. I'm not ever sure why you are bringing up the 90's either social media, as we know it today, did not exist. Antisocial media did not emerge until the the past decade, so lets keep things in perspective, OK? As far as Cynique giving me perspective, she did not say I was being manipulated by social media -- neither she, or I, knew it at the time. Besides this is a phenomenon Cynique currently disputes, so she would not have arrived at that conclusion, that was my conclusion. Look, when Facebook first appeared people where playing Farmville and discovering old friends, no one outside of Facebook knew that it would become human manipulation engine, hell bent on global domination that would become. It took time before Facebook revealed itself to be the great evil that it is. It actually took me a couple of years after arriving at this conclusion to completely delete my account. Part of the reason was the fear of missing out on something, which I know is one of the strategies Facebook uses to keep people connected. If you ever try to delete your account you'll see the slick techniques they use to keep you from actually cutting the cord.

Dude was supposed to be dupe. @Delano you do realize, of all the regular posters your posts are far an away the most riddled with typos. Everyone just lets them slide because we can usually get the gist. Now of course I have no problem being corrected but the sarcasm from someone who is notorious for typos is strange.

Tarkisha's book is indeed the #1 bestselling book on AALBC making the September/October - 2018 list. What is striking, to me about this video, produced by the author, is that she, (1) recognizes the accomplishment of making AALBC's bestsellers list and (2) tells readers that they can buy her book from AALBC. An author doing both — even an AALBC bestselling author — unsolicited is not common (sad but true). I'm confident this is a trend that will continue as more authors, especially the indie authors expand their promotional efforts beyond social media — it is win-win. Indie authors need booksellers who promote and sell their work and booksellers need indie authors to support us. There is no need to send readers to Amazon (everyone already knows you can buy books there). It is a beautiful thing when authors show some love for their most ardent supporters indie booksellers 🙂 Thanks Tarkisha!

People follow charismatics leaders that promise great things. Some people, as I'm trying to explain to @Cynique 😉 are far more easily manipulated than others. Try to show some compassion for the victims -- and lets be clear they were indeed victims. I don't know if Jim Jones was a evil monster or a monster who thought he was going some good, in any event, lets try to create a world where people like Jim Jones can not easily dupe so many people into killing themselves.

I agree with this too.

Twitter (like Facebook) is losing users and is already largely irrelevant to the most desired demographic, young people. Of the last three years only one or two of my students numbering more than 50 each semester say that Twitter is in the top 2 of their social media platforms. None of my friends outside of marketers (a handful) and political wonks (even fewer) use twitter. While Mel keeps saying I'm proving her point because I used Twitter to send a message, what she is failing to recognize, actually using the platform requires actively engaging on it. I used Facebook for the same reason, for many authors (too many if you ask me), the ONLY way to reach them, if you don't have their contact info, is to look them up on Facebook. I don't engage on Twitter, because it does not drive traffic and no one I'm friends with uses the platform save the few exceptions I mentioned which includes Mel and Chris Burns. 45 Tweets and the media who feed off of them are keeping Twitter afloat for now. Indeed it took the 12 years for twitter become profitable and this was just Q4 2017. and there stock price is too volatile. Their ad sales are dwarfed by Facebook whose ad sales are dwarfed by Google's. Twitter is a marginal, peripheral, player in online ad sales and largely attractive to older, less tech savvy people like 45. Again they have a monopoly on 45's online ravings so they are over achieving right now. Obviously my predictions of Twitter's demise are not a statement of fact, or certainly. It is just my opinion and some wishful thinking. No I did not say that, but it may in fact be true once you factor in the disenfranchised voters, the ones who stayed home, the ones who votes for Bernie and the 10% of Black voters who actually voted for 45. Allow me to be clear, I'm not implying it, this is what I'm saying. Vague documentation -- indeed! @Cynique, try reading something outside your social media filter bubble. AALBC Social media platform -- Bite your tongue woman! Don't group AALBC in with Twitter and Facebook -- unless the private investors are going to give me money to lose until I become profitable. LOL! There needs to be another term for what we are doing here. Social media, for me, has become synonymous with manipulation, the creation of filter bubble, profiting off personal information, data mining, creating addiction, brokering in celebrity scandal and the like.

{exasperated sigh} Mel I could have used email to accomplish the same thing, I simply used Twitter as a means for communication, because that was what WKDU provided. I DM'ed you because I know you use Twitter and it was trivial to forward the message to you on Twitter. Again the same could have been accomplished via email, but you meet people where they are. I could not have done the same thing using Facebook -- simply because neither you or I used Facebook. That does not make Twitter platform for eliminating racism or anything more significant. It is a commercial platform designed to generate profit, seemingly at any cost. I could not have shared the message with Cynique, or any of my family or most of my friends, because none of them use Twitter. Twitter's days are numbered (you heard it hear first).

That DM, nor Twitter, will fix a thing. It ever has and never will. I predict Twitter's demise shorty after 45 leaves office.

What is the difference between what Farrakhan preaches and the (fill in the blank) religion? Is it that it is the pro-Black perspective?

{sigh} OK, LOL!

I'm not so convinced of this now. Did you know Marky Z. knew about Russian meddling before it was known to the public? This is simply not true and is documented as such. When I was active on social media, I was feed so much anti-Hillary stuff, I almost did not vote for her. Cynique, it was you you talked some sense into me. The FACT is that Black voter turnout was LOWER in 2016. You can say that Facebook, and social media in general, had no impact, you are very ;ikely wrong given what we know today. Cynique, you are smart and by nature cynical. You lived MOST of your life before there were smartphones and commercial Internet. The majority of people running around today are NOT like you -- a huge portion of the electorate is deeply influenced and in many ways controlled by social media. I've seen all sides and have been a keen observer of the internet even before is was made available to the public. Rather than stubbornly sticking to your story, consider the information of someone who knows more about the subject than you. There is some true to this statement. I can say, in the south, culturally gender roles are much better defined. Some call it "old-fashioned," in any case it i certainly less confusing 🙂 People who don't like this can always move to NYC or San Francisco. Yes that is the point of what I call Black male invisibility! First, please don't judge Black men collectively by this group of politicians and journalists. Second, when 45 was trying to shut down the white guy another white guy immediately vouched for him. When he was dissing April Ryan. Was there another Brother in the room to voucher for her? Was another Brother even given a mic during the entire press conference? Would this mythical Brother have jeopardized the press credentials for the media outlet he represented? Yes, I know you feel this way. I of course complete disagree, for the reasons previously stated and more. If you mean Twitter or Facebook no. Again, you can not use the tool of our opressor for our liberation, because we do not own or control it. There are fewer Black owned websites today which get much traffic or generate much revenue than there were 10 years ago. As Nubian Fellow was trying to explain Black people don't use our platforms (present company excluded). I sent you that DM Tweet correcting the WKDU story, which gave Publishers Weekly credit for my research. Then they lied and said it was because there are a variety of different numbers out there counting bookstores, that is because those sources reference my database at different times and publish different numbers. This is easy to determine, but rather than reference a Black-male owned website they instead gave credit to Publishers Weekly, the venerated white publication. This is a subtle form of marginalization that AALBC experiences regularly that goes unchallenged. -- even by my supporters. The full impact of this, over two decades, is impossible to describe on a discussion forum (that is what books are for 🙂), but the bottom line is that we do not have any platforms that Black people support to a great enough extent to effectively advocate for ourselves. Many of us make great sacrifices trying. You mentioned the million man march, which as you know the mainstream media marginalized as well, focusing on Farrakhan personality (this influence is why many Black people dislike him). Today the Final Call Newspaper is perhaps he largest Black owned Newspaper in the country. The National Newspaper Publishers Association voted it the best newspaper in the country (out of 200 newspapers). As far as I know it is the ONLY nationally distributed newspaper in the U.S. Of course the biggest disadvantage of the publication is that it is run by the National of Islam, so many Black people will not touch it. Say what you will about the Nation, they have demonstrated the power of Black institutions and what is possible. But since they are marginalized by mainstream media Black people generally don't see the potential.

I agree.

True. There is no such thing as an African race, it too us an erroneous term.

Yes much more polite than hooker, whore, prostitute, street walker, etc. You imply it but that it is not universal, the way the words Woman and Lady are. You can find that distinction in the dictionary. If I say, "he is my dad," that does not tell you if he was a good dad or bad dad. However, if is say she is a lady that tells you something positive about the caliber of the woman. Now I appreciate lady comes with some baggage of culturally defined rules of what being a lady means, but there is a distinction none the less. @Delano, English is your first language right? I feel like im teaching my GED class to a non native speaker 😉

@Cynique as you well know the popular votes does not matter why brig it up. 45 won the electoral college. The Russian are not stupid they did not just all willy nilly post positive Trump content. They went in, with surgical precision and target the right people with the right message encourage some not to vote and firing up his base in swing states. You clearly are unaware of the scope and magnitude of the campaign waged on Facebook to influence the election. @Delano, Dad is synonymous with father and does not connote anything about the quality of rearing. You have to say he is a "good" dad or "poor" dad to make the distinction.

This is good news. Access to capital is always a problem for Black indie businesses so it is good to see a community step up and support an institution. The previous owner of Wild Fig, Crystal Wilkinson is an accomplished novelist. @Mel Hopkins, it was refreshing to see read article you linked to reference AALBC as the source of the count of Black owned bookstores. The article reference another article which writes on WUKY's site which says, "Publisher's Weekly reports at least 108 were open in April of this year." Publishers Weekly is not, nor do they claim to be, the source. However WUKY attributes PW. This is sloppy journalism at best and racist at worse. Again I'm glad to see this data correctly credited for change.